Thanks to everyone who entered our 2020 Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild Challenge. We had the theme of Urban, the requirement to use a minimum of 4″ of blue fabric (we handed out the swatch), and the size restriction of the longest side measuring 24 inches. We’ve gathered them all together; they are presented in alphabetical order. All dimensions are listed width by heighth.
The winners of the Participation Prize (random drawing) and the Board Choice Prize are listed at the end, as we wanted you to enjoy the show first.

Quilt Title:  Sidewalk. With Gum.
Quilter: Gayle Bennett
Dimensions: 23 1/2″ x 23 1/2″
Origin: Inspiration from the book Quilting Modern 
Inspired by the Jacquie Gering/Katie Pederson pattern for the Fiesta wall quilt in Quilting Modern as well as my view of sidewalks. From the green strip walkways of my neighborhood, to the miles of San Francisco pavement, and the cobblestones of my one (so far) European adventure the presence of gum blobs — apparently just spit out by a person onto the very path they are walking — has always puzzled me. Facing binding with my first attempt at mitered corners for that type of binding.  

Quilt Name/Title: MetaStructure/Metaesquema
Quilter’s full name: Elizabeth Eastmond
Dimensions 11″ wide by 16″ high

The Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, created a series of over 200 paintings from 1957-1958, titled Metaesquema, which roughly translates to Metastructure.  He was affiliated with the Concrete Movement, which stripped art from any lyrical or symbolic connotations, believing that art should have no meaning other than color, line, and plane.  When I think of urban spaces I think always of the grid, a favorite of mine, and for my challenge I wanted to emulate one of Oticica’s Metaesquemas in fabric.

Title: Urban Emissions
Quilter: Cassandra Gray
Dimensions: 23 1/2” x 22 3/4”
Origin: inspired by slide 12 from the original challenge post slideshow

I traced a copy of the slide showing the elevated train tracks shadow on the city street in Adobe Illustrator, generalizing it a bit and blowing up the vector artwork to 24” x 24”, which I had printed at Office Depot (tip: select blueprint printing for the cheapest option, especially if you don’t need color). I bought the closet color match to the Classic Blue from Pineapple Fabrics, along with a good medium gray and a dark navy blue. I cut out the pattern, used Steam-a-Seam and cut out the bridge and sandwiched and ironed the quilt top layers. I really wanted it to be stylized and dark, with the blue being a beacon – of hope, of escape, of whatever you need a beacon of. To me, it could be a bridge or a building – I honestly don’t think it matters. All quilting is with a walking foot – the gray is quilted with King Tut variegated ‘Obsidian’, which I think gives it a rusty, urban feel, and the blue swirls are a 12wt Wonderfil using Catherine Redford’s spiral walking foot technique. I realized that the instructions were to include the entire 4” square of Classic Blue, which really didn’t work with my design, but I think the as-close-as-I-could-get blue works great as the binding!

Quilt Title: Nashville
Quilters’ Name: Ruthann Elder
Dimension: 15 1/2″ by 18 1/2″
Origin of Quilt Design:  Original design

It was inspired by a building I saw in downtown Nashville while attending Quiltcon.  The way the lights in the building worked with the architecture, I found it inspiring and took a few photos.  This design was my second attempt to design a foundation paper piece pattern on my own.

Quilt Title: Urbanosity
Quilters’ Name: Debi Gardner
Dimension: 15 1/2″ x 19″
Origin of Quilt Design:  Original design

This quilt was inspired by some apartments in Mountain Grove shopping center in Redlands. They look like stacked boxes in gray, brown, red, and yellow. I put a Mondrian spin on them and added a graffiti wall in place of chain link.The matchstick quilting around the appliqued windows was kind of tedious, but I got the effect I wanted.

Quilt Name/Title: Suzhou Skyline
Dimensions: 24″ x 16″
Quilter’s full name: Laura Greene
Origin of Quilt Design: inspiration from Google Images

I have taught summer school at Suzhou International Language School in China for three summers. I love touring Tiger Hill Temple, Pingjiang Street, Humble Administrators Garden, Pants Building, West Lake, Grand Buddah, and Shanshan Temple.

Quilt Name:  Haves and Have Nots
Quilter’s Name: Lynn Hann
Dimensions:  18″ x 23 1/2″
Origin of Quilt Design:  Original design

I started planning this quilt by asking several people what images come to mind with the word, “urban.” People answered, busy buildings, noisy transportation, lights, and commotion.  When I asked my son, he told me that since Roman times, urban places are where wealthy people in power live in luxury while hoards of poor peasants crowd the small left over spaces to eke out a living.  On a recent jaunt to Los Angeles I observed just that:  whole streets, smelling of musty urine, crowded with tents, blankets, and bags of belongings, people huddled with empty bottles, trash, and their faces showing lines of stress and a sense of resignation to their plight. 

The narrow striped fabric in greys reminded me of tall modern buildings.  I used raw edged applique to show the tents and clutter jammed below the modern looking skyline.  The required blue challenge fabric is part of the homeless encampment.  I took liberties to include  politically incorrect stereotypes of white people walking below the tall buildings reaching to the daylight, and people of color huddled below the dark sky, living in makeshift spaces on the sidewalks, in order to emphasize the “Haves and Have Nots” theme.

Quilt Title: Once Upon A Time In East LA
Quilters’ Name: Pat Klassen
Dimension: 24″ x 16″
Origin of Quilt Design:  Original design

It’s an original design that was inspired by the graffiti  on  a passing freight train and walls in East L.A. All the materials were from my stash except the brick fabric.  The technique I used is collage without fusing that I learned many years ago. I love to tell stories using fabric motifs and adding small details like the lost cat poster and old tires. Thank you for this challenge as  I was in a “slump” and needed something to get me going again.

Quilt Title: LA Twilight
Quilter: Helen Matter
Quilt Dimension: 7 1/4” x 10 1/4”
Original Design

Royal blue is my all-time favorite color, and when I saw the swatch, it reminded me of my favorite sky—just after sunset when you can still see some colors and they blend into those beautiful blues before dark.  I struggled with putting together the small pieces, particularly LA City Hall. (I would appreciate some instruction about techniques!) But it was fun to try to achieve the look that was in my imagination.

The LA City Hall building has fascinated me since Marsha first called it the pointy building, which she just told me was from the Lohman and Barkley show on KFI radio!  Because of the city’s height restrictions, it was the tallest building in Los Angeles in 1928 when it was completed and remained so until 1964.  The building looks dwarfed in the LA skyline today (454 ft.).  The other buildings represented are the Wilshire Grand Center (1,100 ft.), the Aon Center (858 ft.), and the Bank of America Center (735 ft.).

Title: City Geese In the Clouds
Quilter: Jan Mills
Dimensions: 24 x 24 inches

The pieced buildings are from a very old magazine describing a different waty to make tumbling blocks. I added lace to indicate fancy moldings on old buildings. The clouds are trapunto and edged in white piping. I used Gail Garber’s technique from her book, Flying Colors, to create freezer paper patterns to paper piece the flying geese. I used my color wheel from our last class as a sun.

Quilt Title: Colorful City
Quilters’ Name: Patti Reyes
Dimension: 24 inches square

I am pleased to submit my original improvisation of Guanajuato, the most colorful city in Mexico. I have always loved photos of that city showing the unregulated application of color to the neighborhoods trailing up the hillsides. All of my fabrics came from stash except for the lapis colored house in front and the sky fabric, a metallic grunge that looks way better in person. I placed purposely wonky steps at the base to ground the neighborhood. I gave a little perspective to the windows to add interest. I added some gray linen and speckled green for textured landscaping.  I have not mastered free motion quilting so I used a walking foot. I decided on a faced binding to make it more modern. This was so very challenging for me but fun as well!

Quilt Title: Modern Manhole Cover
Quilters’ Name: Melody Savoian
Dimension: 24 inches square
Origin of Quilt Design:  Original design

After researching manhole covers and discovering a variety of different styles, I chose to create my own unique design using EQ8. 

Quilt Name: Paved Paradise, Put up a Parking Lot
Quilter: Marsha Schuh
Dimensions: 21 1/2″ x L 22”
Quilter’s Design: Original design
When I heard about the challenge, my first instinct was what Lohman and Barlkley
always called “the pointy building.” They were the comedy team who entertained
me and countless others on KFI during the morning drive to work. When my sister
chose to feature City Hall in her quilt, I began searching for another possibility. I
went through myriad other possibilities, fabrics, and swatches, many of which were
probably better than my final choice. But, I found a small piece of fabric (the center
of the quilt) I’ve wanted to use for a long time.
My family first came to California when I was 4 ½ and stayed in Monterey Park for about 6 months. I thought it was paradise—orange trees, lupins and poppies on the surrounding hills, and the smell of fresh ocean breeze ever and always in the air. We went back to Chicago for another seven years, but returned to my still beautiful, fragrant California on Route 66. I loved Southern California back then, the place where I could wear shorts in winter and pick oranges and kumquats from the trees in our backyard. As the years progressed, my beautiful paradise gradually disappeared. That was the inspiration for my quilt—the disappearance of “all things bright and beautiful” (a phenomenon that continues today).
The title of my piece expresses my pain. The parking lot, the city, the freeways, the
concrete jungle have all but obliterated the glorious land of my youth. The middle
piece depicts what has replaced my dreams, as viewed from a window that seems
like a prison; the cars show the immensity of overwhelming traffic. The lines on
right and left depict the freeways that have overtaken country roads. The blue moon
with striations of fog illustrates the once–in-a-blue-moon glimpses of the way it was.

Unfortunately, Janet Tranbarger’s quilt went sailing out over the internet and didn’t make it into our contest, but we thought it important to include it here.

Quilt Name: Urban Graffiti 4
Quilter: Janet Tranbarger
Dimensions: 24″ square 
Origin of Quilt Design: Original, drafted using Electric Quilt software , then altered using a technique developed by Lorraine Torrence in her book Shifting Perspectives. Cotton fabrics, machine pieced and quilted.

There are two prizes being awarded: Participation, and Guild Board Choice. The winners were announced at our Zoom Meeting, today at 2 p.m.

Congratulations to Laura Greene for Participation (a random drawing)

Congratulations to Pat Klassen for Guild Board Choice

And thank you again to all who entered!

We’re in process of getting the binding on the opportunity quilt and we’ll get a better picture of it, and present it to you soon! Cat did a fabulous job!

Don’t forget to send in photos of your red, white, blue, redwhiteblue, patriotic, or any combination of those colors. We’ll post them as we receive them…if you don’t see a post from Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild that week your email box, it’s because we didn’t have any quilts to share. So, don’t be shy, send them in! And if you don’t have one, see the first post this coming Monday (the day after Flag Day) for a free patriotic quilt to make–it’s quick and easy and comes in two sizes. See you then!

If you would, please include the usual information:

We’ve been watching with interest as all the Urban Challenge quilts have been coming in to our emailbox–you are really creating some interesting little quilts.

We’ll be presenting them at our first ever Zoom Meeting on Saturday, June 13, 2020. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to meet with you all, and hope you can join us at 2 p.m. on that day. Our Program Chairs will send out a link to your email; just click to join using Zoom.

Tomorrow, May 26th, is our deadline for the quilt to be submitted. We can’t wait to see what you’ve been working on!

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Then, beginning June 14th, Flag Day, we hope you will send us photos of your patriotic quilts, which is — loosely defined — any quilt with red or white or blue or redwhiteblue. We’ll have an ongoing show of them through June and into July, when we don’t meet. Maybe you’ve always been wanting to make a little one, to stand on your desk, or a bigger one for a (socially distanced) picnic. We want to see them!!

Use these guidelines of things to tell us about your quilt:

We recently had a Board Meeting via Zoom. Click to read the minutes:

We are excited about the entries we’ve received for our Urban Challenge, originally set for an April reveal, but now set for a June 13th reveal at our upcoming Zoom Meeting. We just wanted to remind you about the parameters of our guild’s 2020 challenge and encourage you to get making — it’s a small quilt, so it can be made quickly, in a day or maybe two.

Remember this? It was our original advertisement for our Challenge, and included a 4″ swatch of blue fabric, which you must use in your quilt somehow. More is okay, but at this date it may be hard to get locally; take your swatch in to match if you need to buy. The original was Lapis, a Painter’s Palette solid fabric from Paintbrush Studios.

The two other guidelines:

The full details and a Google “Mood Board” are found on this post.

Email a good-quality picture of your challenge quilt to: iemodernquiltguild@gmail.com
Please include:

• Quilt Name/Title
• Dimensions
• Quilter’s full name
• Origin of Quilt Design (original design, variation on an existing block, pattern, etc.)
• A Few Details about what you want to say about it. This might include some construction details or things you struggled over, or things at which you were successful. It might also include what prompted you to make it, or who it is for. Pretend you are standing in front of us at our Guild Meetings, and give us the quilt’s biography. We’d love to hear it!
(We’ll edit them for clarity and punctuation.)

That’s it! Thanks for entering, and we’ll send you a reply mail letting you know we received it.